STEPHEN  B.  WEEKS 

CUSS  OF  1686;  PH.&  THE  JOHNS  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY 


OF  THE 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


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ADDRESS 


tl 


OF  THE 


Hon,  James  Grant, 


OF  DAVENPORT,  IOWA, 


TO  THE 


Alumni  of  the  University  of  N .  C, 


At  Chapfl  Hill,  on  the  6th  of  June,  1878. 


RALEIGH: 

Edwards,  Brottghton  &  Co.,  Printers  and  Binders. 

July,  1878. 


At  a  meeting  of  the  Alumni  Association,  held  after  the 
Address  was  delivered,  His  Excellency  Gov.  Vance  arose 
and  moved  that  the  thanks  of  the  Alumni  be  tendered  to 
Judge  Grant  for  his  able  and  eloquent  address,  and  that  a 
copy  be  requested  for  publication.  The  motion  being  put 
by  Judge  Battle,  the  President  of  the  Association,  it  was 
<carried  unanimously  with  much  enthusiasm. 


■ 


ADDRESS. 


Gentlemen  of  the  Alumni  Association  : 

It  is  fifty  years  since  I  became  a  student,  in  the  Sopho- 
more class  of  1828,  at  this  venerable  seat  of  learning. 

To  this  circumstance,  a  lapse  of  half  a  century  since  I 
came  here  to  pursue  the  course  of  studies  in  college  life, -I 
am  indebted  for  the  invitation,  with  which  I  have  been 
honored,  to  address  you  to-day. 

Perhaps,  too,  the  address  of  Professor  Wm.  Hooper  to  you 
in  1859,  the  semi-centennial  of  his  graduation,  on  the  occa- 
sion of  a  visit  by  the  Hon.  James  Buchanan,  President  of 
the  United  States,  with  the  Hon.  Jacob  Thompson,  a  grad- 
uate of  my  class,  on  whom  the  President  had  conferred  a 
distinguished  position  in  his  Cabinet,  and  my  recent  asso- 
ciations with  Mr.  Hooper,  may  have  induced  you  to  expect 
another  address  glittering  with  the  light  of  his  keen  wit, 
trenchant  satire,  and  burning  eloquence. 

But  I  am  not  a  satirest  or  logician,  as  Hooper  was,  nor 
an  orator,  as  Gaston  was,  whose  speech  to  the  young  men 
of  this  University  in  1882  has  gone  through  five  editions. 
"X  am  a  plain,  blunt  man  ;  I  have  neither  wit  nor  words, 
nor  worth,  action,  utterance,  nor  power  of  speech  to  stir 
men's  blood  ;  I  only  speak  right  on,  and  tell  you  that  which 
you  yourselves  do  know." 

This  University  dates  its  existence  from  the  year  1795. 
Mr.  Kerr  was  its  first  Presiding  officer  ;  Mr.  Harris  its  sec- 
ond. Neither  of  them  remained  here  more  than  a  year. 
Dr.  Joseph  Caldwell  was  its  first  President,  from  1797  to 
1812,  when  he  resigned,  and  was  succeeded  by  Mr.  Chap- 
man, who  resigned  in  1816,  when  Dr.  Caldwell  was  re-ap- 
pointed, and  continued  in  office  until  his  death  in  1835. 

Hon/David  L.  Swain,  who  had  been  Governor  of  the  State, 


(4) 

succeeded  Dr.  Caldwell,  and  held  the  office  until  his  death, 
in  1868.  He  was  succeeded  by  Mr.  Solomon  Pool,  who  re- 
mained until  1874.  The  institution  languished  until  1875, 
when  it  was  re-organized  and  placed  under  the  control  of 
its  Alumni ;  and  from  that  period  it  has  commenced  a  new 
life,  which  we  hope  may  continue  as  long  as  our  State  lives. 

When  I  became  a  student,  in  1828,  this  University  had 
an  established  reputation,  a  full  course  of  college  study, 
with  five  professors,  two  tutors,  and  from  eighty  to  a  hun- 
dred students.  Many  of  its  early  graduates  had  become  ad- 
vocates and  statesmen,  and  had  acquired  fame,  in  this,  as 
well  as  other  States.  It  had  a  large  number  of  students 
from  the  adjacent  States,  and  they  had,  by  their  distinguish- 
ed ability,  conferred  a  reputation  upon  the  institution 
where  they  were  taught,  which  gave  it  a  name  known 
among  the  colleges  of  the  land  that  has  not  diminished 
down  to  this  day. 

During  the  period  of  my  college  life,  in  addition  to  Pres- 
ident Caldwell,  who  was  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy, 
Elisha  Mitchell,  who  had  just  succeeded  Dennis  Olmstead, 
was  Professor  of  Chemistry ;  James  Philips  was  Professor  of 
Mathematics ;  William  Hooper  was  Professor  of  Greek  and 
Latin  ;  Nicholas  Marcellus  Hents  was  Professor  of  Modern 
Languages.  Lorenzo  Lee  and  Thompson  Bird  were  tutors. 
The  number  of  students  did  not,  at  any  period  of  my  col- 
lege life,  exceed  one  hundred  and  fifty.  The  institution 
was  well  endowed.  It  had  just  begun  a  course  of  prosperity, 
which  continued  to  increase,  until  its  students  numbered 
many  hundreds.  The  late  civil  war  broke  up  the  schools 
all  over  the  South  ;  the  students  joined  the  arm}' ;  the  pro- 
fessors had  no  persons  to  instruct;  the  endowment  of  this, 
ample  and  propitious  as  it  was,  was  appropriated  for  war 
purposes,  and  the  institution  was  practically  closed,  for  the 
want  of  money  and  students. 

Dr.  William  Hooper  survived  all  his  colleagues  who 
taught  while  I  was  here. 


(5) 

He  was  a  blue-eyed,  nimble-witted  man,  to  the  outward 
world.  Like  the  celebrated  comic  actor,  Liston,  he  was  al- 
ways grave;  his  most  laughable  jokes,  his  most  polished 
wit,  his  keenest  satire,  scarcely  induced  a  smile  upon  his 
lips.  The  thunder  of  applause  which  his  thoughts  pro- 
voked seemed  to  him  merely  an  agreeable  surprise.  He  was 
afflicted  with  a  natural  melancholy,  which,  in  earlier  life, 
disturbed  his  religious  faith.  He  left  this  institution  for  no 
other  ostensible  cause  than  his  preference  to  lead  a  more  re- 
ligious life,  accepted  a  professorship  in  a  theological  college 
in  South  Carolina,  and  from  thence  went  to  Wake  Forest 
College,  founded  about  the  time  I  left  this  State,  and  in 
that  institution  he  took  a  professorship,  and  remained  there 
a  number  of  years. 

It  was  my  privilege,  after  he  was  eighty,  to  renew,  with 
great  pleasure  to  him  and  to  me,  the  acquaintance  of  my 
youth.  The  years  which  had  made  him  old  had  made  him 
gentle  and  tolerant.  The  same  brilliant  intellect  that  used 
to  set  the  school  in  a  roar  had  been  enlarged  by  length  of 
days,  and  his  mind  was  still  the  pent  up  volcano  that  it 
was  fifty  years  before. 

I  last  saw  him  in  Philadelphia,  in  1876,  attending  the 
hundredth  celebration  of  that  Fourth  of  July  which  his 
grandfather  had  contributed  to  make  the  immortal  dawn  of 
Republican  America.  To  undertake  this  journey,  he  was 
encouraged  by  our  friend,  Mr.  Paul  Cameron,  than  whom 
your  State  has  no  more  devoted  son,  nor  Dr.  Hooper  a  more 
earnest  admirer. 

I  found  Doctor  Hooper  in  a  boarding  house  provided  by 
the  Baptists  for  their  friends,  unheralded,  unattended  in  his 
noble  effort,  which  cost  him  his  life,  to  witness  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  centennial  year  of  American  Independence. 

About  a  month  after,  I  was  advised  of  his  death.  No 
question  this  want  of  attendance  in  that,  to  him,  last  jour- 
ney, was  caused  by  that  indomitable  will  and  resolution 
which  makes  a  man  whose  youth  has  been  vigorous,  scorn 


(6) 

attendance  and  disdain  the  care  and  deference  which  the 
young  are  always  more  willing  to  bestow  than  old  age  to 
accept. 

He  realized  the  same  fate,  except  that  his  last  hours  were 
watched  with  the  tender  kindness  of  his  family,  that  befell 
his  friend,  Elisha  Mitchell.  He  died  a  victim  to  his  own 
self-reliance.  Like  Milo,  the  famous  wrestler  of  Crotona,  he 
forgot  he  was  very  old,  and  he  was  lured  to  death  by  his 
confidence  in  his  strength  and  ability  to  endure  exposure  and 
fatigue.  His  endurance  had  departed  from  him  at  eighty- 
one,  without  his  being  willing  to  admit  it.  At  his  age,  and 
with  his  high  position  as  a  learned  man,  and  his  immediate 
descent  from  one  of  the  statesmen  signers  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  he  was  entitled,  at  the  grand  national 
gathering  of  forty  millions  of  people,  at  Philadelphia,  to  an 
escort  of  the  greatest,  wises  and  best  of  North  Carolina's  sons 
educated  here,  and  many  of  them  indebted  to  him  for  the 
primary  instruction  of  that  learning  which  made  them  an 
honor  to  this  College,  to  this  State,  and  to  this  nation  :  such 
a  retinue  he  could  have  had  for  the  asking ;  but  he  was  too 
independent,  too  self-reliant,  too  confident  of  his  own  great 
powers,  then  departed,  and,  to  his  infinite  credit,  too  modest, 
to  ask  for  that  attention  and  deference  which  he  well  knew 
should  have  been  the  voluntary  offering  of  grateful  hearts. 

Other  instructors  followed  those  whom  I  left  here,  and 
among  them  Mr.  Green,  afterwards  and  now  Bishop  of  Mis- 
sissippi. Messrs.  Fordyce  Hubbard,  W.  H.  Battle,  Manuel 
Felter,  John  Wheat,  Albert  M.  Shipp,  J.  deBernier  Hooper, 
Hedrick,  Deems,  Walker  Anderson,  Charles  Phillips, Brown, 
Battle  and  others. 

From  the  time  of  its  organization  in  1795,  the  University 
continued  to  grow  in  usefulness  and  popular  esteem  until 
the  late  civil  war. 

The  number  of  graduates  from  1804  up  to  this  com- 
mencement amount  to  1,749. 

It  has  furnished  to  the  nation  a  President  Polk,  Vicer 


(7) 

President  King,  five  members  of  the  Cabinet,  many  minis- 
ters to  foreign  courts,  and  numbers  of  members  of  the  Sen- 
ate and  House  of  Representatives.  Thomas  H.  Benton,  who 
was  for  thirty  years  continuously  a  Senator  from  Missouri, 
was  a  student  at  this  College. 

In  your  State  government  there  is  hardly  an  office  of 
honor  that  has  not  been  filled  by  the  graduates  from  this 
building.  The  University  has  its  representatives  in  the 
highest  places,  in  church,  among  the  leaders  of  the  bar,  in 
the  healing  art ;  and  when  the  laws  became  silent  its  grad- 
uates became  leaders  and  acquired  gl^ry  and  renown  in  an 
army  whose  courage,  and  continence,  and  skill,  has  survived 
a  defeat  which  was  annihilation  to  the  cause  for  which  they 
went  forth  to  battle,  and  for  which  many  of  them  died. 

Men  educated  and  trained  here  have  been  presidents  and 
governors  of  banks,  institutions  of  learning,  builders  and 
managers  of  railroads,  and  the  agriculture  of  your  State  has 
received  its  ablest  instructors  from  the  men  who  have  gone 
from  this  school  to  that  most  extensive  and  independent 
employment  of  the  American  race. 

And  it  is  the  history  of  the  men  who  have  gone  hence  to 
the  busy  haunts  of  the  world,  that  the  ^morality  and  per- 
sonal obligation  to  duty  which  has  been  taught  here,  has 
attended  those  who  have  held  high  places,  in  all  their  em- 
ployments. 

Many  have  adorned  the  Senate  and  the  forum  with  their 
talents  ;  but  they  have  adorned  human  nature  more,  in  the 
honesty,  truth,  justice  and  integrity  with  which  they  have 
administered  their  high  offices;  virtues  which  have  con- 
tributed more  to  their  success  than  their  learning  and 
ability. 

If  North  Carolina  has  never  achieved  a  distinguished 
name  and  fame  by  her  progress  in  science,  in  art,  in  manu- 
factures or  commerce,  she  has  won,  and  deserves  to  main- 
tain among  the  States  of  this  Union,  a  reputation  for 
integrity  in  public  and  official  life,  which  was  without  a 


(8) 

stain  until  the  government  was  usurped  by  that  lot  of  ad- 
venturers which  at  the  end  of  the  civil  war  swooped  down 
on  the  Southern  States  with  a  desolation  as  blighting  to 
their  prosperity  as  a  swarm  of  locusts,  which,  sometimes,  in 
myriads  fly  down  from  our  western  mountains,  and  falling 
on  our  fertile  prairies  and  rich  pasture?  consume  every 
green  thing  and  leave  the  whole  earth  in  their  circuit  a 
blackened  mass  of  destruction  and  ruin. 

Fifty  years  of  a  busy  life  is  a  long  period  of  existence  in 
any  part  of  the  historic  life  of  man.  It  is  a  long  vista  to 
look  back  to  the  year  1828,  when  I  joined  a  small  band  of 
students  in  these  halls  to  undergo  the  preparatory  training 
for  the  great  course  of  life.  There  were  fourteen  of  us : 
Henry  J.  Cannon,  J.  De  Bernier  Hooper,  Allen  C.  Jones, 
Calvin  Jones,  Giles  Mebane,  Thomas  J.  Owen,  Thomas  J. 
Pitchford,  Samuel  B.  Powell,  Archibald  A.  J.  Smith,  Wil- 
liam W.  Spear,  Jacob  Thompson,  Jesse  A.  Waugh,  James 
M.  "Williamson,  and  James  Grant.  Of  this  number,  after  a 
lapse  of  fifty  years,  Hooper,  Allen  Jones,  Calvin  Jones,  Owen, 
Pitchford,  Spear,  Thompson,  and  Grant  survive.  Of  the 
survivors  Hooper,  Mebane,  Spear  and  Grant  are  here  to-day. 
If  my  memory  fails  me  not,  there  was  nothing  about  this 
class  that  made  it  famous  in  college  history.  I  am  quite 
sure  there  was  not  one  among  it  that  rendered  it  infamous ; 
there  was  no  bad  sheep  to  infect  a  whole  flock.  We  went 
through  our  college  course  with  fair  diligence  in  our  studies; 
we  required  no  special  admonitions  to  good  behavior ;  we, 
none  of  us,  desired  or  achieved  notoriety  as  boisterous,  idle 
or  dissipated  students  ;  we  pursued  the  usual  college  studies, 
and  performed  our  college  duties  with  enough  of  diligence 
and  order  to  escape  censure  from  our  instructors. 

After  finishing  the  studies  allotted  to  our  course  here, 
Cannon,  Grant,  Calvin  Jones,  Mebane,  Thompson  and  Wil- 
liamson, became  lawyers ;  Hooper  maintained  his  reputa- 
tion as  the  first  student  of  the  class,  and  became  a  teacher ; 
Owen  became  a  minister  of  the  Gospel,  as  did  Spear. 


(9; 

Thompson  alone  acquired  a  national  reputation  as  a 
statesman;  has  been  a  member  of  Congress,  and  Secretary 
of  the  Interior  in  the  Cabinet  of  James  Buchanan  ;  was  dis- 
tinguished in  the  military  and  diplomatic  service  of  the 
unsuccessful  party  in  the  civil  war. 

Reverses  of  fortune,  an  independent  spirit,  and  probably 
a  too  haughty  temper,  an  aversion  to  slavery,  the  avowal  of 
which  would  have  done  no  good  to  mankind,  and  caused 
infinite  pain  to  parents  and  relatives,  and,  I  trust,  a  not 
unworthy  ambition,  carried  the  speaker  in  early  manhood 
to  the  rich  lands  of  the  northwest,  then  the  very  out-post  of 
civilization  in  America.  This  separation  of  the  ties  of  early 
association  has  prevented  me  from  seeing  the  faces  of  some 
of  my  classmates  in  all  these  fifty  years. 

Long  and  constant  association  with  other  people,  whose 
habits  of  energy,  and  pluck,  and  plod,  and  whose  indepen- 
dent mode  of  thinking  accorded  with  my  own,  have  made 
me,  in  association,  in  manners,  in  sympathy  and  feeling,  a 
frontierman,  a  stranger  to  the  land  of  my  birth,  and  a  wan- 
derer from  the  associations  of  childhood.  But,  in  all  this 
long  life  of  half  a  century,  in  days  of  poverty,  of  obscurity, 
of  failure,  of  oblivion,  and  of  ultimate  success  and  old  age, 
of,  I  trust,  respect  and  honor  among  people  who  have  grown 
from  manhood  to  old  age  with  me  on  the  border  (as  you 
would  regard  it)  of  civilization,  there  was  always  cherished, 
down  in  the  deep  fountains  of  the  affections,  a  love  of  the 
old  fireside,  of  the  scenes  and  associations  of  childhood,  of 
the  kins-people  and  playmates  and  schoolmates  of  boyhood's 
days,  always  a  still  longing  for  the  old  plantation,  and  for 
the  old  folks  at  home.  In  all  my  wanderings,  the  old  North 
State  has  never  lost  its  place  in  my  memory  or  affections. 
To  me,  in  the  full  maturity  of  manhood's  days,  in  the  en- 
joyment of  the  recollections  of  a  long  life,  there  is  ever  a 
well-spring  of  happiness  in  the  memories  of  the  past,  which 
cluster  around  the  humble  home  of  childhood's  hours ;  and 
I  rejoice  that  the  misfortune  of  boyhood  which  stimulated 


(10) 

me  to  go  to  another,  and  as  I  think,  a  better  land,  was 
passed  in  the  pine-barrens  of  your  sea-coast,  and  that  the 
sturdy  manhood,  the  independent  spirit,  the  indomitable 
will  to  succeed,  were  all  made  a  part  of  my  existence  in  the 
quiet  shades  of  these  college  grounds. 

We  who  have  lived  in  the  last  half  century  have  lived  in 
the  most  useful  and  progressive  age  of  our  race. 

The  middle  half  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  has  been  in 
all  the  arts  and  sciences,  and  occupations  of  man,  which 
render  life  useful,  the  most  eventful  in  the  whole  world's 
history. 

No  half  century  of  known  eras  has  produced  such  grand 
events,  or  such  useful  inventions,  as  that  in  which  we  have 
lived. 

Science,  which  in  all  civilized  ages  has,  by  the  study  of 
nature's  laws  been  diligent  in  promoting  human  welfare, 
has  in  this  period  eclipsed  the  glory  of  all  its  prior  achieve- 
ments. In  the  words  of  one  of  the  most  accomplished 
writers  of  our  language,  in  any  period  : 

"  It  has  lengthened  life ;  it  has  mitigated  pain ;  it  has 
extinguished  disease  ;  it  has  increased  the  fertility  of  the 
soil  ;  it  has  given  new  security  to  the  mariner;  it  has  fur- 
nished new  arms  to  the  warrior  ;  it  has  spanned  great  rivers 
and  estuaries  with  bridges  of  form  and  material  unknown 
to  our  ancestors ;  it  has  rendered  the  thunderbolt  harmless  : 
has  guided  it  from  heaven  to  earth,  made  it  the  means  of 
speech  between  man  from  ocean  to  ocean,  and  continent  to 
continent ;  it  has  lighted  up  the  night  with  the  splendor  of 
the  day  ;  it  has  extended  the  range  of  human  vision  ;  it  has 
multiplied  the  power  of  human  muscles;  it  has  annihilated 
distance;  it  has  rendered  intercourse,  friendly  offices,  the 
dispatch  of  business  common  to  all  nations  and  people ;  it 
has  enabled  man  to  descend  to  the  depths  of  sea ;  to  soar 
in  the  air;  to  penetrate  securely  the  noxious  recesses  of  the 
earth,  to  traverse  the  land  in  cars,  which  whirl  along  with- 
out horses;  to  travel  the  ocean  in  ships,  which  run  against 


(11) 

the  hurricane,  and  which  move  independent  of  wind  and  of 
tide.  It  is  a  philosophy  which  never  attains  its  end,  which 
never  admits  perfection,  and  is  always  improving  what  it 
has  done  before;  its  law  is  progress ;  a  point  which  yester- 
day was  invisible,  is  its  goal  to-day,  and  will  be  its  starting 
point  to-morrow." 

There  is  a  reciprocal  action  between  science  and  its  appli- 
cation to  the  useful  purposes  of  life.  While  there  is  no 
advance  in  any  branch  of  science  which  does  not  sooner  or 
later  give  rise  to  a  corresponding  improvement  in  practical 
art,  so  every  advance  made  in  practical  art  gives  to  science 
something  which  was  not  known  before. 

The  great  material  advantages  which  this  age  possesses 
over  all  its  predecessors,  the  cheapness  of  production,  which 
has  made  comforts  and  luxuries  unknown  to  our  fathers 
necessities  in  our  day,  are  traceable,  in  a  great  degree,  to 
those  inventions  and  instruments  which  require  a  diminu- 
tion of  labor,  and  which  enable  one  man  to  accomplish  acts 
which  formerly  required  the  services  of  a  multitude:  to  the 
steam  engine  and  its  countless  applications  to  useful  arts  ; 
to  an  increased  knowledge  of  metals  and  their  properties  ; 
to  the  use  of  powerful  and  accurate  tools ;  to  the  plan  of 
multiplying  copies  instead  of  fashioning  every  thing  anew 
by  hand  labor.  Half  a  century  ago,  many  things, — perhaps 
we  may  safely  say  most  things,  in  use, — were  slowly  and 
imperfectly  made  by  the  tedious  process  of  the  workman's 
hand.  Now  perfect  results  of  ingenious  manufacture  are  in 
every  day  use,  scattered  everywhere,  so  that  their  very  uni- 
versal use  prevents  us  from  giving  them  that  admiration 
which  their  wonder  would  otherwise  excite. 

A  single  machine  now,  worked  by  the  forces  of  nature, 
performs  with  ease  and  certainty  the  labor  which  was  ex^ 
tracted  from  the  hard  toil  of  thousands.  Every  natural 
agent  has  been  pressed  into  man's  service :  the  winds,  the 
water,  fire,  gravity,  electricity,  light  itself. 

These  great  results  of  science  applied  by  art,  and  to  useful 


(12) 

purposes,  have  become  so  much  a  part  of  the  every-day  of 
our  life's  journey,  that  it  is  difficult  for  one  who  has  not 
witnessed  the  changes  produced  by  such  appliances  to  realize 
their  importance.  T©  comprehend  why  the  present  epoch 
is  worthy  of  so  much  admiration  in  the  world's  progress, 
address  yourself  to  some  one  who  is  old  enough  to  remem- 
ber the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  Enquire  what 
wonderful  changes  have  been  wrought  in  the  aspect  of 
things  within  a  single  life-time;  and  ask  what  has  brought 
about  these  changes?  Look  at  the  railway  and  the  steam- 
ship ;  the  telegraph  ;  the  great  guns ;  the  mighty  ships  of 
war;  the  machine  more  potent  in  shaping  the  destinies  of 
our  race  than  all  the  implements  of  war,  the  steam  printing 
p>ress;  the  endless  and  marvelous  transformations  of  chem- 
istry, which  from  dirt  and  dross  extracts  fragrant  essences 
and  dyes  more  beautiful  than  Tyrian  hue ;  that  burrows  in 
the  mountain  side,  and  the  deep  caverns  of  the  earth,  and 
brings  out  the  rocks  and  converts  them  into  gold  ;  that 
wonderful  instrument  which  can  make  a  faint  beam  of  light, 
reaching  us  after  a  journey  of  a  thousand  years,  unfold  its 
tale  and  reveal  the  secrets  of  the  stars. 

The  steam  engine  was  supposed  to  have  reached  perfec- 
tion by  the  inventions  of  Watt.  Its  application  to  propel- 
ling vessels  on  inland  waters  which  required  only  short 
journeys  and  hourly  renewals  of  fuel,  under  the  inventions 
of  Fulton,  was  supposed  in  1828  to  have  reached  its  ulti- 
mate useful  results. 

The  first  use  of  steam  in  a  locomotive  was  applied  about 
the  year  1804.  It  could  draw  loads  only  by  means  of  tooth 
driving  wheels.  In  1813  the  important  discovery  was  made 
that  such  aid  was  not  necessary  ;  that  the  adhesion  of  a 
smooth  wheel  on  a  smooth  rail  was  sufficient  for  all  the  or- 
dinary purposes  of  draft.  The  progress  in  utilizing  this 
machine  was  slow,  until  about  the  year  1825,  when  George 
Stevenson  adopted  the  blast-pipe  tubular  boiler.  In  1829 
the  longest  railway  in  the  world   was  but  a  few  miles,  and 


(13) 

steam  had  not  then  been  used  to  draw  wagons  upon  an  iron 
way.  In  that  year  the  managers  of  the  Liverpool  and  Man- 
chester railway,  which  was  thirty-two  miles  long,  offered  a 
prize  of  five  hundred  pounds  to  the  inventor  of  a  locomo- 
tive that  would  attain  a  speed  of  ten  miles  an  hour,  draw- 
ing a  load  of  twelve  tons.  The  invention  of  Stevenson,  the 
"Rocket,"  won  this  prize,  drawing  its  load  fourteen  miles  an 
hour.  Since  that  period  such  improvements  have  been 
made  in  locomotives  and  iron  ways  that  engines  are  made 
weighing  forty  tons,  and  carrying  from  fifty  to  a  thousand 
tons  load,  at  a  speed  of  from  ten  to  sixty  miles  an  hour. 

The  first  railway  for  the  carriage  of  passengers  was  the 
Stockton  and  Darlington,  thirty-seven  miles  long,  built  in 
1825.  The  carriages  were  drawn  by  horses.  At  this  period 
the  only  improved  means,  over  the  common  highway,  of 
intercourse  between  different  marts  on  land,  were  canals, 
which,  in  the  northern  part  of  the  temperate  zone,  were 
like  the  rivers,  frozen  uver  for  one-half  the  year.  The  busi- 
ness was  so  badly  conducted  that  the  transport  of  a  bale  of 
cotton  from  Liverpool  to  Manchester  is  said  to  have  occu- 
pied as  long  a  time  as  that  required  for  an  ordinary  voyage 
across  the  Atlantic  in  sailing  vessels.  All  the  commerce 
between  the  Atlantic  and  Ohio  was  by  wagons. 

Mankind,  even  in  the  face  of  all  our  progress,  is  slow  to 
adapt  anything  new.  The  fate  of  Fulton  is  not  peculiar. 
Howe,  the  sewing  machine  man,  long  after  his  invention 
was  in  practical  use,  was  thought  to  be  a  cracked-brain  en- 
thusiast. The  canal  interest  in  Britain  had  such  influence 
in  parliament  as  to  delay  for  years  the  passage  of  a  bill  to 
construct  a  railroad  from  Liverpool  to  Manchester.  The 
act  was  passed  in  1828.  The  line,  when  begun,  was  to  be 
used  to  convey  goods,  and  the  wagons  to  be  drawn  by  horses. 
When  the  proposal  was  made  and  a  prize  offered  to  induce 
the  use  of  steam  power,  an  eminent  authority,  in  a  serious 
treatise  on  the  subject,  "hoped  he  might  not  be  confounded 
with  those  enthusiasts  who  maintained  the  possibility  of 


(14) 

carriages  being  driven  on  a  railway  at  such  a  speed  as  twelve 
miles  an  hour." 

The  ridicule  which  this  great  energy  of  our  day  received 
from  all  classes,  is  a  matter  of  astonishment.  The  canal 
men  made  fun  of  the  proposed  railroad  and  continued  their 
exorbitant  charges,  just  as  railways  do  now  in  our  time. 

The  land-owners  then,  as  now,  of  large  and  wealthy  es- 
tates in  rich  countries  offered  resistance  to  the  surveyors, 
and  wrould  not  permit  them  to  enter  their  fields.  Even 
clergymen  threatened  them  with  violence.  Civil  engineers 
scouted  the  idea  of  a  steam  railway.  Stevenson  was  held 
up  to  the  public  an  an  ignoramus  and  maniac  by  the  most 
intelligent  men  of  his  time.  A  journal  in  the  interest  of 
advanced  civilization,  favorable  to  railways,  exclaimed : 
"What  can  be  more  ridiculous  than  the  prospect  held  out 
of  locomotives  traveling  twice  as  fast  as  stage  coaches ;  we 
should  as  soon  expect  the  people  of  Woolwich  to  suffer 
themselves  to  be  fired  off  in  one  of  Congreve's  rockets  as  to 
trust  themselves  to  the  mere}7  of  a  machine  going  at  such  a 
rate  ;  we  will  back  old  father  Thames  against  the  Wool" 
wich  for  any  sum  ;  we  trust  that  parliament  will,  in  all  rail- 
ways which  it  may  sanction,  limit  the  speed  to  eight  or  nine 
miles  an  hour." 

As  late  as  1855  a  mob  gathered  in  a  large  town  in  the 
United  States,  and  tore  up  the  track  of  two  railroads  about 
to  connect  in  the  Streets  of  their  town,  because  through 
trains  would  ruin  their  commerce.  Legislative  restrictions 
against  free  commerce  in  railways  loaded  down  all  the  ear- 
lier charters  granted  by  the*  States  in  this  country, 

During  our  half  of  this  century,  in  all  Europe,  in  North 
America,  the  British  colonies  of  India,  Australia,  and  New 
Zealand,  the  chief  means  of  internal  commerce  between  ad- 
jacent states  and  nations,  and  all  the  rapid  intercourse  of 
people  and  exchange  of  commercial  enteprise  among  men-, 
is  made  by  the  railway.  People  visit  and  traffic  in  towns 
and  cities  in  elegant  coaches,  drawn  through  the  streets  on 


(15) 

railways;  and  all  the  great  business  affairs  between  town 
and  country,  cities  and  States,  and  kingdoms,  are  conducted 
on  the  railway.  It  has  penetrated  forests,  deserts  and  moun- 
tains; crossed  the  great  waters  to  connect  the  commerce  of 
one  country  and  neighborhood  with  another.  It  has  almost 
annihilated  space,  and  time  that  was  formerly  counted  by 
the  day  and  week  now  occupies  in  business  but  the  hour. 

Fifty  years  ago  it  required  me  forty  days  on  horse-back,  (the 
then  most  expeditious  way  of  travel;,  to  go  from  Raleigh, 
the  capital  of  your  State,  to  the  few  log-cabins  on  Lake 
Michigan,  named  Chicago.  This  same  journey  I  have  done 
by  the  railway  and  steam  engine  in  forty-eight  hours  ;  and 
the  same  means  of  commerce  has,  in  thirty  years,  converted 
the  log  huts  into  an  imperial  city,  built  of  marble,  with  four 
hundred  thousand  enterprising  people,  more  potent  in  the 
world's  history  than  Rome  in  the  days  of  Augustus  Cresar. 
So,  in  all  parts  of  civilized  society,  the  railway,  by  the  anni- 
hilation of  space,  has  increased  the  use  and  duration  of  the 
time  which  is  allotted  to  our  existence  to  such  a  degree  that 
we  live  longer  and  accomplish  more  in  fifty  years,  than  in 
the  nine  hundred  years  of  the  age  of  Methuselah. 

These  United  States  have  to-day  incomparably  much  the 
longest  railway  system  of  the  world.  Eighty  thousand 
miles  of  railroad,  distributed,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  in 
all  the  thirty-eight  States  of  the  Union,  have  made  the  Uni- 
ted States,  for  all  time,  one  nation  with  one  destiny.  All 
other  civilized  countries  have  utilized  this  modern  inven- 
tion of  traffic  and  travel,  and  the  whole  world  is  bound  to- 
gether by  the  iron  way,  and  exchanges  commerce  by  the 
iron  steam  carrier. 

The  increase  of  speed  and  cheapness  in  travel  and  traffic 
by  the  iron  road  has  been  equalled,  if  not  excelled,  by  the 
ease,  comfort,  luxury,  and  safety  in  the  transport  of  persons 
from  one  place  to  another.  The  iron  horse  never  grows 
weary,  never  stops  to  sleep  or  to  rest ;  supplied  with  fuel 
and  water,  he  carries  you  by  day  and  by  night ;  he  tarries 


(16) 

not  in  the  valley  which  he  descends,  nor  at  the  stream  which 
he  crosses,  nor  in  the  desert  from  hunger,  nor  in  the  moun- 
tain which  he  climbs.  All  seasons  are  alike  to  him — 
neither  the  blast  of  winter,  the  heat  of  summer,  the  rains 
or  the  snows,  the  night  or  the  day,  arrest  his  progress. 
You  ride  in  carriages  which  are  converted  into  hotels  of 
palatial  splendor  on  wheels,  large  enough  to  carry  half  a 
hundred  persons  to  a  carriage,  and  thousands  in  a  train. 
You  enter  one  of  these  palace  cars  at  the  emporium  of  the 
United  States  in  the  east,  and  start  on  a  week's  jourae}'  to 
the  western  ocean  ;  fifty  years  ago  it  took  half  a  year  at  the 
peril  of  life,  from  want  of  food  and  shelter — you  now  accom- 
plish in  a  few  days  a  year's  journey.  Entering  the  train 
you  sit  down  to  amusement  or  study  as  you  would  in  your 
own  dwelling.  You  are  supplied  with  the  morning  news- 
papers before  you  breakfast.  This  is  furnished  you  in  the 
hotel  car  with  the  same  food  and  the  like  service  as  you  find 
at  the  best  modern  hotels  or  the  private  mansions  of  the 
rich.  You  lie  down  or  sit  up,  or  sleep  or  wake,  as  it  may 
suit  your  convenience  You  find  new  friends  and  make 
new  acquaintances  on  the  road.  You  are  constantly  enter- 
tained in  the  day  with  momentary  changes  of  place  and 
scenery.  You  pass  through  a  city  of  half  a  million  and  in 
an  hour  you  are  forty  miles  away,  looking  at  the  green  pas- 
tures and  the  lowing  herds ;  you  see  the  farmer  at  his  toil, 
the  manufacturer  at  his  forge.  At  one  moment  you  are 
passing  over  the  boundless  prairie,  green,  or  brown,  or  white 
with  snow  as  the  season  in  which  you  travel  creates;  at 
another  you  descend  the  deep  canon,  or  the  fertile  vale  ;  in 
another  moment  you  are  climbing  the  giddy  heights  of  the 
great  snowy  range  of  mountains,  and  you  look  down  with 
awe  in  the  bottomless  abyss  beneath,  or  you  feast  your  eyes 
with  the  green  foliage  and  rocky  glens  of  the  horse-shoe 
bend  in  the  eastern  mountains ;  and  in  your  six  days' 
journey  you  encounter  every  variety  of  soil,  climate,  and 
habitation  which  have  been  developed  and  brought  into  the 


(17) 

civilization  of  the  white  man  since  the  days  that  we  were 
young.  If  in  such  a  journey  you  are  jaded  and  worn  out, 
you  rest  as  if  in  your  own  dwelling  by  your  own  fireside  ; 
or  if  you  are  on  business,  you  write  in  offices  provided  for 
your  convenience.  At  the  windows,  made  of  plate  glass,, 
you  can  enjoy  in  comfort  the  prospect  of  the  snow-clad 
mountains  winch  tower  up  in  the  distance  one  hundred 
miles  away,  or  you  can  contemplate  the  boundless  plains 
growing  only  the  sage  bush,  and  tenanted  only  by  the 
prairie  dog,  the  owl,  and  the  reptile.  At  night,  when  ex- 
hausted with  the  novelties  of  the  day,  you  go  to  bed  in  a 
luxurious  couch  which  has  been  folded  up  and  out  of  sight, 
and  you  wake  up  in  the  morning  refreshed  with  sleep,  to 
contemplate  a  different  natural  world  from  the  one  you  saw 
at  night. 

At  the  end  of  a  six  days'  journey  you  have  traveled  across 
the  continent  of  North  America;  you  have  seen  every  varie- 
ty of  soil,  and  felt  every  variety  of  climate  which  exists  in 
the  same  latitude  across  the  United  States.  You  have  left 
the  Atlantic  Ocean,  with  its  storms  and  tempests,  and  you 
have  landed  at  the  golden  gate  of  the  quiet  Pacific ;  you 
have  gone  from  the  commercial  capital  of  your  country  on 
the  east,  to  the  new  seat  of  empire  of  the  west. 

Fifty  years  ago  the  invention  of  Robert  Fulton  had  furn- 
ished our  inland  waters  with  the  perfection  of  steamboat 
travel  and  transport,  and  the  navigable  rivers  were  the  sole 
highways  of  commerce.  The  railway  has  changed  all  that. 
Our  western  commerce  once  was  by  the  waters  inland,  north 
and  south,  but  now  commerce  seeks  the  east  from  the  west. 
Great  as  was  the  achievement  of  Fulton  fifty  years  ago,  no 
-man  believed  that  the  ooean  could  be  crossed  with  a  steam- 
ship. When  the  project  was  talked  of  in  1837  it  was  believed 
impracticable.  Learned  men  discussed  the  approaching 
steaming  of  the  Syrius  from  England  to  America  as  an 
impossibility.  The  great  newspapers  of  the  old  world  wrote 
their  articles  ridiculing  the  project  and  sent  them  by  the: 
2 


(IS) 

packet  ships  to  New  York ;  and  before  the  sailing  vessel's 
reached  the  harbor  containing  the  speculations  of  the 
learned  against  the  project,  the  Syrius  had  landed  at  the 
docks  in  safety  and  confronted  them  with  the  solution  of 
the  problem.  At  this  day  the  whole  of  the  oceans  are 
threaded  with  steam  propellers.  They  go  by  the  score  a 
week  between  Europe  and  America,  and  they  send  the 
echoes  of  their  thunder  to  Afric's  sunn}'  fountains  and  Indies 
coral  strands.  They  go  to  China  and  Japan  for  teas,  to 
India,  to  Africa,  and  to  America  for  cotton.  They  exchange 
the  woods,  the  wool,  and  the  cordage,  and  the  gold  and  silver 
of  New  Zealand  and  Australia,  for  the  cotton  goods  of  Eng- 
land, the  silks  and  luxuries  of  the  European  Continent,  the 
^carriages  and  plows,  and  reaping  machines,  the  engines  and 
cars  of  America.  They  go  in  the  heats  of  summer  to  the 
very  limits  of  animal  life,  within  sight  of  the  north  pole. 

But,  wondeiful  as  has  been  the  progress  in  our  day  of  the 
railroad  and  steamer,  they  have  been  surpassed  in  the  bril- 
liant achievements',  the  very  heavenly  conception  of  the 
telegraph,  and  just  now  the  telephone,  which  have  utilized 
thelightning  which  Franklin  brought  down  from  the  realms 
above,  and  made  it  speak  throughout  the  whole  world  and 
across  the  sea,  in  an  instant  of  time. 

The  invention  of  the  telegraph  belongs  to  our  half  cen- 
tury, and  the  useful  invention  belongs  to  our  countryman. 
•Great  inventions  are  often  the  results  of  the  labors  of  not 
one,  but  many  minds,  and  the  beginning  of  the  discoveries 
■that  led  to  that  of  the  telegraph  rurs  back  a  hundred  years. 

In  October,  1832,  on  board  a  packet  ship  bound  from 
France  to  the  United  States,  was  a  talented  American  artist 
who  had  gained  some  reputation  in  his  profession  as  a  por- 
trait painter.  A  casual  conversation  with  his  fellow  pas- 
sengers on  electricity  and  the  plan  by  which  Franklin  drew 
it  from  the  clouds  along  a  slender  wire,  suggested  to  him 
the  possibility  of  thus  communicating  intelligence  by  sig- 
nals at  a  distance.     A  fellow  passenger,  Jackson,  had  a  gal- 


(19) 

vanic  battery  and  an  electro-magnet  on  board,  and  these  he 
described  to  the  painter,  by  the  aid  of  rough  sketches.  Here 
two  men  came  together  by  accident — a  seed-word,  sown  per- 
haps by  some  purposeless  remark,  took  root  in  fertile  soil — 
the  one  profiting  by  that  which  he  had  seen  and  read,  made 
suggestions  and  gave  explanations  of  phenomena  and  con- 
structions only  imperfectly  undeistood  by  himself,  and  en- 
tirely new  to  the  other.  The  theme  interested  both  and  be- 
came a  subject  of  daily  conversation.  When  they  parted 
the  one  forgot  or  was  indifferent  to  the  matter;  while  the 
other,  more  in  earnest,  followed  it  up  with  diligence,  testing 
and  scheming  and  devising  ways  and  means  to  realize  what 
had  been  only  a  dream  to  both.  His  labors  brought  him 
to  the  adoption  of  a  method  not  discovered  by  either,  and 
Morse  became  the  inventor  of  the  telegraph.  This  inven- 
tion was  first  put  to  a  practical  test  in  1836,  between  Balti- 
more and  Washington,  by  an  appropriation  by  Congress. 

The  telegraph  in  this  day  is  just  as  much  a  life  necessity 
to  the  affairs  of  men  as  light  is  to  the  health  of  the  human 
body. 

Another  invention,  of  perhaps  as  much  importance  to  the 
better  half  of  our  race,  entirely  American  in  conception  and 
invention,  is  the  sewing  machine;  which  increases  the  ca- 
pacities of  woman's  employment  beyond  calculation,  and 
relieves  her  from  Ihe  everlasting  stitch,  stitch  of  her  pecu- 
liar vocation,  which  has  been  a  burden  from  the  time  the 
needle  was  invented.  The  needle  is  a  necessity  of  human 
life,  the  sewing  machine  has  made  it  the  finest  of  arts. 
Whether  for  use  or  ornament,  the  sewing  machine — guided 
by  the  hand,  and  driven  by  the  foot,  whether  in  the  log 
cabin,  roofed  with  boards  and  tenanted,  by  poverty,  or  in 
the  mansions  of  the  rich—  is  the  necessity,  the  luxury,  the  or- 
nament of  woman's  household. 

In  our  day,  too,  mankind  have  learned  more  of  the  uses 
and  nature  of  light  than  was  ever  known  before. 

No  other  invention  of  the  last  fifty  years,  or  of  any  period 


(20) 

of  years  or  any  era  of  history,  is  so  beautiful,  so  attractive 
to  the  eye,  or  pleasing  to  the  moral  sentiments  of  man's  na- 
ture as  photograph}7.     The  first  step   in  this  discovery  was 
begun  by  Daguerre,  in  the  year  1839.     It  has,  from  its  first 
crude  efforts  by  him  in  taking  pictures  by  sun-light,  until 
this  day,  when  it  seemed  to  have  attained  its  greatest  excel- 
lence, exercised  a  beneficial  influence  over  the  social  senti- 
ments, the  arts  and  sciences  of  the  whole  world,  an  influ- 
ence not  less  real  because  it  is  now  unobtrusive  and  com- 
mon.    It  cherishes  domestic  and  friendly  relations  by  its  re- 
peated copies  of  familiar  faces;  keeps  fresh  in  our  memories 
friends,  relatives,  honored  people  distant  or  dead — it  keeps 
alive  our  admiration  of  the  great  and  the  good  by  preserving 
the  features  of  heroes,  statesmen,  learned  and  good  men — 
it  pleases  our  sight  by   copies  from   all  the  beautiful  and 
grand  scenes  in  nature;  the  mountains,  the  valleys,  the 
green  fields  and  ]  leasant  pastures,  the  ocean  and  its  great 
storms;  the  sun  in  its  eclipses — are. brought  to  our  firesides 
without  the  labor  and   expense  of  travel  ;  it  has  improved 
the  pictorial  art  by  furnishing  the  painter  in  his  study  with 
copies   of  nature — it   reproduces    his   works,    multiplying 
copies  with  an  exactness  which  he  in  vain  strives  to  accom- 
plish— it  reproduces  the  finest  works  of  sculpture — it  lends 
invaluable  aid  to  almost  every  science;  the  astronomer  uses 
it  to  copy  the  pictures  of  the  sun,  moon  and  stars — "by  it 
the  architect  superintends  the  erection  of  distant  buildings, 
the  engineer  watches  over  the  progress  of  his  designs  in  re- 
mote lands,  the  medical  man  amasses  the  records  of  morbid 
anatomy,  the  geologist  studies  the  structure  of  the  earth, 
the  ethnologist  compares  the  features  of  every  race."     Not  a 
village  or  hamlet  in  the  land  that  does  not  have  its  school 
of  art,  where  all  classes,  old  and  young,  rich  and  poor,  con- 
gregate to  study   the  human   face  divine;    and  the  love  of 
the  beautiful  in  art  and  nature  is  fostered  and  cultivated  in 
life  among  the  lowly  as  well  as  among  the  refined  and  edu- 
cated. 


(21) 

The  nations  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  had  perhaps 
before  the  Pharos  of  Alexandria  used  some  means  to  throw 
the  beams  of  light  across  the  dark  waters  of  the  sea  at  night 
to  snide  the  mariner  in  his  course  and  Warn  him  of  his 
perils  from  the  sunken  rock  or  treacherous  shoal.  The 
modern  light-house,  with  its  beautiful  appliances,  is  entirely 
the  results  of  the  applied  science  of  our  age.  Formerly  the 
lofty  structures  for  this  purpose  burned  on  their  summits 
fires  of  wood,  and  whatever  beacons  existed  down  to  the  end 
of  the  last  century  were  mere  blazing  fires.  In  olden  times 
the  beacon  fires  on  the  coast  of  this  State  were  said  to  be 
pine  torches  on  the  shore:  and  tradition  says  that  they  were 
sometimes  conveniently  carried  in  the  hand  to  lure  the  un- 
lucky ships  that  visited  the  inhospitable  coast  to  the  shoals 
where  the  wrecker  most  frequented.  But  now  every  head- 
land has  its  tall  spire  and  immense  lamps,  which  throws  a 
halo  a  score  of  miles  over  the  sea,  and  science  has  given  an 
additional  security  to  the  mariner  to  that  furnished  him  in 
the  compass,  the  chronometer,  and  the  sextant ;  when  he 
approaches  the  land  in  shadows,  clouds,  darkness,  and 
storm  he  scans  the  horizon  for  the  first  glimpse  of  the  hos- 
pitable light-house,  which  seems  to  say  that  the  country  he 
is  approaching  has  been  watching  for  his  coming  and  wel- 
comes him  to  its  shores. 

Though  science  in  its  diligent  search  into  the  phenomena 
of  electricity  has  not  been  able  to  ascertain  what  it  is  and 
what  creates  it,  it  has  made  in  our  day  remarkable  discov- 
eries in  celestial  chemistry  and  physics. 

Chemistry  fifty  years  ago,  like  geology  and  mineralogy, 
was  in  its  infancy  as  a  science.  Within  the  last  twenty 
years  chemistr}*  has  not  been  content  with  its  researches  on 
earth.  The  spectroscope  has  revealed  to  our  admiration 
and  added  to  our  knowledge  unexpected  discoveries  in  the 
universe  by  means  apparently  wholly  inadequate  to  accom- 
plish them.  A  little  triangular  piece  of  glass  gives  us  the 
power  to  rob  the  stars  of  their  mysteries,  and  tells  more 


(22) 

about  these  distant  worlds   than  the  wildest  imagination 
could  have  believed  attainable  to  human  knowledge. 

One  of  the  most  astute  philosophers  of  the  present  cen- 
tury declared,  not  many  years  ago,  that  all  we  could  know 
of  the  heavenly  bodies  must  ever  be  confined  to  an  acquain- 
tance with  their  motions,  and  to  such  limited  knowledge  of 
their  features,  as  the  telescope  reveals  in  those  nearest  to  us. 
A  knowledge  of  their  composition,  he  asserted,  could  never 
be  attained,  because  we  had  no  means  of  chemically  exam- 
ining the  matter  of  which  they  are  constituted.  Such  was 
the  deliberate  utterance  of  a  man  by  no  means  disposed  to 
underrate  the  power  of  the  human  mind  in  the  pursuit  of 
truth;  and  such  might  still  have  been  the  opinion  of  the 
wise  and  well  as  the  ignorant,  but  for  the  remarkable  train 
of  discoveries  which  has  led  us  to  the  construction  of  in- 
struments revealing  to  us  the  nature  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 
We  have,  by  means  of  the  analysis  of  the  rays  of  light,  and 
the  substances  which  produce  them,  the  same  certainty 
about  the  existence  of  iron  in  the  sun  as  we  have  of  its  ex- 
istence in  the  hills  around  us,  a  fact  unknown  to  us  fifty 
years  ago.  The  last  few  years  have  seen  the  dawn  of  a  new 
science  in  this  regard;  and  two  branches  of  knowledge, 
which  formerly  seemed  as  far  as  the  poles  asunder — astron- 
omy and  chemistry — have  thus  assisted  in  the  learning  of 
the  celestial  bodies.  The  progress  which  has  been  made  in 
this  department  of  spectroscopic  research  is  so  rapid,  and 
the  field  so  promising,  that  the  well-instructed  juvenile  of 
the  future,  instead  of  wondering  what  the  little  stars  are, 
will  probably  only  have  to  direct  his  sidereal  spectroscope 
to  the  object  of  his  admiration,  in  order  to  obtain  exact  in- 
formation as  to  what  that  star  is,  chemically  and  physically. 
These  chemical  experiments,  often  repeated,  have  shown 
that  certain  substances  invariably  produce  only  certain  rays 
of  light,  and  hence,  whenever  these  rays  are  found  to  come 
from  the  heavenly  bodies,  their  physical  texture  is  demon- 
strated.    The  revelations  of  the  spectroscope  awaken  new 


(23) 

thoughts  in  the  mind  which  has  obtained  even  a  glimpse 
of  the  wonders  which  it  discloses  in  relation  to  the  mechan- 
ism of  the  heavens.  In  every  age  and  in  every  county  the 
stars  have  attracted  the  gaze,  and  excited  the  admiration  of 
men.  The  wise  men  of  the  East  were  led  by  the  stars  to 
the  discovery  of  the  author  of  a  new  religion,  and  followed 
by  their  course  to  seek  his  abode  and  worship  him.  The 
belief  in  their  influence  over  human  affairs  has  been  pro- 
found, universal  and  enduring.  It  survived  the  dawn  of 
modern  science,  being  among  the  last  shades  of  the  night  of 
superstition  which  melted  away  in  the  morning  of  true 
knowledge.  In  our  own  day  the  belief  among  even  persons 
of  intelligence  is  not  uncommon  that  the  moon  exercises 
an  influence  over  the  productions  of  the  soil;  and  the  spec- 
troscope may  in  its  researches  tell  why  and  how  the  light 
influences  the  growth  as  well  as  the  color  of  plants.  Even 
Francis  Bacon,  the  father  of  inductive  philosophy,  and  old 
Sir  Thomas  Brown,  the  exposer  of  "vulgar  errors,"  believed 
in  the  influence  of  the  stars,  for,  while  recognizing  the  im- 
postures practiced  by  its  professors,  they  still  believed  as- 
trology not  altogether  a  vain  science. 

It  was  reserved  for  the  mighty  genius  of  Newton  to  prove 
that  there  are  invisible  ties  connecting  the  earth  with  those 
remote  and  brilliant  bodies,  more  potent  than  astrology 
divined.  He  showed  that  even  the  most  distant  bodies  are 
bound  to  their  companions  by  the  same  power  that  directed 
the  fall  of  the  apple.  And  now  the  spectroscope  is  revealing 
other  lines  of  connection,  and  showing  that  there  is  a  closer 
tie  of  a  common  constitution,  and  that  they  are  all  made  of 
the  same  matter,  and  obey  the  same  physical  and  chemical 
laws,  which  belong  to  the  earth.  We  learn  that  hydrogen, 
and  magnesium,  and  iron,  and  other  familiar  substances, 
exist  in  these  inconceivably  distant  suns,  with  the  same 
properties  which  they  exhibit  here.  We  confirm,  by  the 
spectroscope,  the  fact,  partially  revealed  by  other  researches, 
that   the  apparently    fixed  stars  are   in   reality   careering 


(24) 

through  space,  each  with  its  proper  motion.  We  learn  that 
they  are  the  theatres  of  vast  changes  and  convulsions  like 
our  own  earth,  the  rapidity  and  extent  of  which  surprise 
credulity.  A  wonderful  star  in  the  constellation  of  the 
Crown,  in  1866,  suddenly  blazed  out  from  a  scarcely  dis- 
cernable  telescopic  star,  to  become  one  of  the  most  conspicu- 
ous in  the  heavens,  and  the  bright  lines  it3  beams  produced 
on  the  spectroscope  revealed  that  this  abrupt  splendor  was 
due  to  masses  of  burning  hydrogen.  When  this  fire  went 
out  the  star  reverted  to  its  obscurity.  Everywhere  in  the 
universe  there  is  motion  and  change.  There  is  no  pause, 
no  rest;  but  a  continual  unfolding,  an  endless  progression. 

Our  day  and  generation  has  witnessed  the  discovery  of 
the  true  nature  of  the  earth,  in  its  geological  structure  and 
its  minerals,  and  all  the  former  mysteries  of  nature  in  this 
respect  have  been  cleared  away.  Even  the  richest  and  most 
beautiful  of  colors  are  now  extracted  from  the  black  refuse 
of  coal.  The  bowels  of  the  earth  have  been  discovered  not 
only  to  contain  vast  bodies  of  burning  materials  unknown 
before,  but  great  lakes  of  fuel  have  been  found,  and  pumped 
up  from  the  dark  caverns  below,  and  give  light  and  heat  to 
our  upper  world.  Not  only  have  new  metals  been  discov- 
ered, but  the  exudations  of  gums  from  the  trees  of  the  forest 
have  been  utilized  in  the  manufacture  of  almost  everything 
required  by  the  world's  business.  Ships,  cars,  engines, 
furniture,  clothing — nearly  every  useful  thing — are  now 
made  of  india  rubber  and  gutta  percha. 

Nor  has  the  advance  in  mechanical  arts  been  limited  to 
the  loom  or  the  anvil.  In  the  cultivation  of  the  soil  every 
year  of  the  last  half  century  has  made  some  new  progress. 
We  plant  no  longer  by  hand,  but  by  machine  labor,  guided 
and  controlled  by  hands  directed  by  brain  power.  We 
mount  the  plow  on  wheels ;  we  cultivate  the  land  with  half 
a  dozen  plows  together;  we  reap  by  machinery,  we  thresh 
by  machinery,  and  we  expect  in  our  day  to  see  the  Indian 
corn   gathered,  and  the  cotton   picked,  by  machine  labor. 


(25) 

We  have  duplicated  our  capacity  to  till  the  soil  by  the 
machines  which  ingenuity  has  invented  to  take  the  place  of 
hand  labor. 

A  hundred  years  ago  not  a  pound  of  coal,  nor  a  cubic 
foot  of  illuminating  gas,  was  burned  in  this  country.  No 
iron  stoves  were  used,  and  no  contrivances  for  economizing 
heat  were  employed,  until  Benjamin  Franklin  invented  the 
iron-frame  fire-place,  which  still  bears  his  name.  All  the 
cooking  and  warming,  in  town  as  well  as  country,  was  done 
by  the  aid  of  fire  kindled  on  the  brick  hearth,  or  in  the 
brick  ovens.  Pine  knots  or  tallow  candles  furnished  the 
light  for  the  long  winter  nights,  and  sanded  floors  supplied 
the  place  of  carpets  and  rugs  and  mats.  The  water  used 
for  household  purposes  was  drawn  from  deep  wells  by  the 
creaking  sweep.  There  were  no  friction  matches  in  those 
early  days,  by  the  aid  of  which  a  fire  could  be  easily  kindled, 
and  if  the  fire  went  out  upon  the  hearth  overnight,  or  the 
tinder  was  so  damp  that  the  spark  would  not  catch,  the  only 
means  remaining  was  that  of  wading  through  the  snow  or 
the  mud  a  mile  or  so  to  borrow  a  brand  from  a  neighbor. 
Only  one  room  in  the  house  was  warmed  unless  some  mem- 
ber of  the  family  was  ill ;  in  all  the  rest  the  temperature 
was  below  the  freezing  point  during  many  nights  of  winter. 
The  men  and  the  women  of  a  hundred  years  ago  went  to 
their  beds  in  a  temperature  colder  than  our  modern  barns 
and  wood-sheds,  and  they  never  complained,  for  the}'  had 
no  idea  of  anything  better. 

In  every  department  of  useful  arts  the  age  in  which  we 
have  lived  surpassesall  others.  In  manufactures,  the  substi- 
tution of  machinery  for  hand  labor  ;  in  the  multiplication 
of  printing  by  the  power-press  ;  the  cheapness  of  books  and 
of  knowledge ;  the  progress  in  our  time  exceeds  the  aggre- 
gate of  all  other  ages. 

It  is  just  now  that  the  world  has  seen  and  felt  and  realized 
the  commercial  value  of  cutting  a  canal  to  join  the  waters 
of  the  Mediterranean  with  the  Red  Sea,  and  the  land  of  the 


(26) 

Pharaohs  is  now  cut  in  two  by  a  great  artificial  river,  in 
which  floats  the  great  steamers  of  the  world.  Forty  centu- 
ries have  waited  for  the  glory  of  this  achievement,  which  is 
changing  the  commerce  of  the  eastern  world  as  much  as  the 
continental  railway  has  changed  and  enlarged  that  of  the 
West. 

Nor  has  the  improvement  of  the  weapons  of  war  in  our 
lifetime  been  less  progressive  than  the  arts  of  peace.  The 
great  guns  that  throw  hundred- pound  shot  many  miles,  the 
repeating  rifles  and  pistols,  the  great  iron -clad  vessels  of 
war,  in  our  times,  are  wondrous  inventions  in  the  death- 
dealing  instruments,  with  which  civilized,  no  less  than 
savage  nations,  settle  their  quarrels  and  destro}'  each  other. 

Our  age  has,  above  all  others,  been  an  age  of  utility.  Our 
progress  has  in  every  direction  been  practical,  whether  in 
the  clothing  of  the  body,  in  the  comfort,  convenience,  and 
luxury  of  our  homes  that  we  inhabit,  in  the  food  that  we 
eat,  the  present  life  has  made  immense  advances  over  all 
other  ages. 

One  century  ago  the  people  of  the  United  States  num- 
bered three  millions  ;  four  centuries  ago  the  British  Islands 
contained  a  population  of  three  millions.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
race  has  increased  on. this  continent  in  the  last  fifty  years 
from  twelve  to  more  than  forty  millions,  and  from  twenty- 
four  to  thirty-eight  States.  The  British  Islands  have  in- 
creased their  home  population  in  four  centuries  to  nearly 
thirty  millions  ;  but  in  the  last  century,  and  after  they  had 
lost  the  united  colonies  with  their  three  millions,  the}r  have 
extended  their  dominion  over  two  hundred  and  fifty  mil- 
lions of  the  human  race ;  and  in  the  last  half  century  they 
have  planted  new  colonies  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand, 
the  land  of  the  antipodes,  which  are  as  numerous  and  pow- 
erful as  our  revolted  colonies  of  an  hundred  years  ago. 

In  a  retrospect  of  the  half  century  of  an  active  life,  we  are 
prone  to  bear  in  mind  the  place  which  we  have  made  our 
own,  and  in  which  a  busy  life  has  found  employment.     It 


(27) 

— my  country,  your  country — is,  perhaps,  as  grand  a  mark 
of  the  progress  of  modern  nations  as  can  be  found,  where 
the  English  language  is  spoken.  In  June,  1838,  Iowa  was 
an  unknown  land.  It  was  really  beyond  civilization,  and 
the  home  of  the  red  man.  Only  a  small  strip  along  the 
great  river  was  allowed  to  be  trodden  by  the  white  man. 
In  June  of  that  year  it  was  organized  by  Congress  as  a  terri- 
tory. It  had  a  population  of  twenty-three  thousand  people. 
Now  it  has  nearly  two  millions.  It  has  nearly  six  hundred 
thousand  children,  between  five  and  twenty-one  years  of 
age.  Of  these  nearly  five  hundred  thousand  are  at  school, 
and  they  employ  ten  thousand  teachers.  Forty  years  ago 
it  had  no  railroads — no  common  roads,  for  that  matter,  ex- 
cept what  the  prairie  lands,  destitute  of  trees,  furnished. 
Now,  every  county  of  the  State  has  its  railroad,  and  every 
township  its  dozen  school-houses  and  churches.  It  has  two 
public  universities,  free  to  everybody  who  chooses  to  go.  It 
produces  yearly  $200,000,000,  and  has  a  valuation  of  $400,- 
000,000  of  property. 

In  this  age  and  country  of  progress,  in  which  we  have 
passed  our  own  lives,  we  irresistibly  inquire,  on  a  return 
from  a  fifty  years'  absence,  Watchman,  what  of  the  night, 
at  the  old  home?  The  answer  is:  The  day-star  shines 
here,  too,  as.  well  as  in  other  lands;  though  this  pncient 
seat  of  learning  has  been  neglected,  the  common  education 
has  not.  North  Carolina  has  .made  altogether  as  much  pro- 
gress in  the  common  school  education  as  its  most  ambitious 
native  could  desire.  It  has  always  had,  and  always  will 
have,  the  draw-back  of  an  iron-bound  coast.  It  were,  per- 
haps, as  well  if  it  had  no  ocean  on  its  borders.  It  has  not 
had  the  advantages  of  trade,  or  rich  lands,  which  make 
marts  of  traffic,  or  numerous  people.  It  has  had  a  popula- 
tion of  different  colors  and  races,  between  whom,  whether 
in  slavery  or  freedom,  there  is  and  must  be  some  kind  of 
antagonism.  And  3ret,  after  a  disastrous  civil  war,  which 
reduced  more  than  half  its  population — most  intelligent  and 


(28) 

most  enterprising — to  poverty,  and  gave  the  smaller  half 
liberty  and  the  same  misfortune,  the  State  has  provided 
common  schools  for  both  classes,  and  it  numbers  two  hun- 
dred and  one  thousand  children  at  sehool,  nearly  six  thou- 
sand school  districts,  and  twenty  five  hundred  teachers. 
Wheeler,  the  learned,  patient,  distinguished  historian  of 
North  Carolina — a  man  who  loved  his  native  State  so  well 
as  to  give  his  whole  life  to  her  history,  and  is  now  here,  at 
three-score  and  ten,  to  testify  his  devotion  to  her  service — 
in  his  history  records  the  humiliation  that  a  larger  propor- 
tion of  its  population  could  not  read  and  write  than  an}r 
State  in  the  Union.  This  humiliation  will  pass  away  be- 
fore the  nineteenth  century  ends. 

Brothers  Alumni !  What  part  have  we  acted  in  this  grand 
drama  of  human  life,  during  this  period  of  progress  in  the 
world,  in  which,  we  could  not,  if  \\Te  would,  have  been  mere- 
ly spectators.  Have,  we  so  lived  in  the  service  of  mankind 
to  be  a  guardian  God  below  ?  Have  we  employed  the 
mind's  brave  ardor  in  heroic  aims,  such  as  might  raise  us 
over  the  common  herd,  and  make  us  live  forever? 

That  is  life ! 

Thus  far  had  I  prepared  to  speak,  when  after  the  long 
absence,  my  e}^es  were  greeted  by  the  sunset  in  this  heaven 
kissing  hill. 

The  young,  who  grow  up  under  the  shade  of  these  noble 
oaks,  become  so  familiar  with  the  highest  type  of  the  beau- 
tiful in  scenery,  that  they  must  go  to  other  lands  to  do 
justice  to  its  wondrous  grace. 

I  have  traveled  in  all  parts  of  North  America;  I  live  on 
the  most  beautiful  spot  along  which  the  great  father  of 
waters  wanders  from  the  frozen  North  to  the  sea  in  the 
South.  From  the  tower  of  my  dwelling,  which  I  have  dedi- 
cated as  a  shrine  to  the  Goddess  Industry,  I  can  see  the 
great  river,  threading  its  silver}'  way,  for  twenty  miles 
through  the  richest  pastures  of  the  land,  dotted  with  farm 


(29) 

houses  and  fields  of  growing  corn  ;  its  majestic  hill-sides 
covered  with  vines  and  shady  groves,  but  never  have  my 
eyes  rested  on  so  delightful  a  prospect  as  these  groves,  with 
their  vales  below  growing  the  cotton,  which' clothes  the 
human  race,  and  the  hills  on  either  side  standing  guard  and 
ever  watching  around  this  sacred  spot. 

You,  lovers  of  classic  Greece,  can  you  picture  in  your 
wildest  fancy  a  grove  of  Academicus  like  this?  And  dare 
you  say  that  Socrates  was  wiser  than  Caldwell,  or  Plato  more 
sagacious  than  Swain. 

Here  is  a  temple  planted  and  adorned  by  the  Omnipo- 
tent, more  beautiful  than  the  Pantheon  or  the  one  which 
Solomon  erected  at  Jerusalem.  Theirs  were  of  marble  and 
ornamented  with  silver  and  gold;  but  this  one  was  made 
by  the  everlasting  God,  and  fashioned  of  forms  of  beauty 
which  will  never  decay,  and  adorned  with  the  splendors  of 
a  sun  which  oblivion  can  never  cloud,  and  it  requires  not 
an  oriental  fancy  to  picture  that  I  am  standing  at  the  foot 
of  Mount  Olympus,  and  that  Jupiter — the  thunderer  has 
driven  the  clouds  from  its  summit — and  looking  down  upon 
this  hill,  has  descended,  with  his  hundred  sons,  and  every 
one  a  God,  to  give  me  welcome,  and  invite  me  to  erect  an 
altar  at  his  feet;  and  that  Juno,  with  Minerva  and  Venus, 
and  all  her  attendant  goddesses  had  assembled  to  invite  the 
bride  of  my  bosom  to  a  home  at  the  feet  of  heaven. 

Men  of  Carolina  !  May  God's  blessing  ever  attend  you  ; 
and  I  now  bid  vou  Hail  and  Farewell. 


For  manj'  of  the  ideas,  and  much  of  the  language  in  this  Address,  I  am 
indebted  to  a  modern  treatise  on  the  subject  of  which  I  have  been  speaking. 


